The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

I started with 2 skeins of natural Cascade 220. I knitted a rectangle of stockinette with garter borders. 

Then I used these tools...

 

Food dye pens.

Icing colors and stencil brushes

Paper cups, water and measuring spoons. Teeny tiny measuring spoons.

Did I mention paper cups?

I drew the outline of the girl and her rainbow hair with charcoal and then painted on each color using the stencil brush. She is floating in the sky...

After painting, the knitting was covered up in plastic wrap - top and bottom.

It was rolled up and steamed.

Then it cooled.

After drying, the details of the girl were added. I used buttons for her eyes, black and red and yellow yarn for her features. I was going to paint them in but the buttons made her look bug-eyed without some other texture. She has some braids and some loose hair.

I used a food writer pen to add a chin and some neck shading. Also, give a little shadow to her nose. French knots make up her nostrils and she has stem stitched eyes and eyebrows.

And there she is.. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

Remember the buttons I showed you a few weeks ago? They turned into her kaleidoscope eyes.

Swarovski crystals scattered over her hair and then sewn down represent the diamonds.

After looking at her for a few days, I felt she looked rather thin-lipped so I got out some Ultra Alpaca and gave her more voluptuous lips with satin stitch around the original lips.

 And there is she is in all her glory - floating in the sky...

for those who are wondering what this is all about - the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" features John Lennon singing about a hallucinatory state in a monotonic, slow, mesmerizing tone. The title is supposed to stand for LSD. Hence: Knitting Under the Influence.

Sadly, many of the younger members at Camp had no clue about the song and so only half the attendees laughed when I told my story about how my knitting flowed in multi-colors from my needles as I played the song on my iPhone.

I won this lovely kit. The shawl is pretty but

 the yarn is even prettier!

 I also get a nice zippered case. I think this laceweight will be a nice shawl.

I hope you enjoyed my Knitting Under the Influence! It was a fun adventure, a grand experiment. I had never used stencil brushes to paint on colors, much less use the food writer pens. I didn't set the dye after I used those so I don't know if they will last.

The entire project is recyclable except for the bits of yarn. The hair will come right out, the crystals and beads can be removed and once I snip out the embroidery out, I have a dyed blank which can be used to make a cowl or a hat or mittens.

A litle dyeing, a little spinning, a little knitting

I have been doing a little bit of a lot of different things this week. I knit quite a bit during the week. Yesterday I spun for a couple of hours to get some variety and color into my fiber world. And today, I am dyeing up some yarn samples to see what I need to do to get the color I want.
This is the shawl, as of this morning. Nice, isn't it? I think it will be a big shawl. I love how the colors are getting darker as I go down. That is what I planned when I spun the yarn. I'm on the last skein., which goes into a black background soon.
Do you remember this top? That got turned into these skeins, which is what is now the shawl I am knitting. This is my first real spinning project and I am thrilled at how it is turning out.
I don't have pictures of the spinning yet but here is some of the dyeing.I am dyeing 10 gm skeins of Cascade 220, from 1 100 gm skein. I am using Wilton's food coloring. They are concentrated colors and in paste form. Today's goal is to mix up the dye and soak the yarn so I can nuke them tomorrow evening to set the dye.


Here are the first 4 jars of dye solution. Each is 250 ml of water with 1/8 tspn of the color. I want to see how deep the color is before I plan to dye the actual yarn. Hence the sampling. From left to right it is Violet, Orange, Lemon Yellow and Christmas Red. I am going also dye Sky Blue, Spring Green, and try to come up with a chartreuse and a magenta by blending these colors. I am also happily dyeing my fingers. I didn't use gloves when I mixed up the first batch. This is just from opening the jars. Since it is food coloring and India's Holi festival was last week, I figure it is OK. If anyone asks me, I celebrated Holi !